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Topic: WNDR3700 exploration

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So, out of curiosity, are most people building backfire or from trunk/bleeding edge? My latest working build is listed as "KAMIKAZE (bleeding edge, r21771)" from svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk

Last commit to backfire trunk have a lot of new code (https://dev.openwrt.org/changeset/21803/branches/backfire/package ??) for WNDR3700 chipset. But last compiled trunk is to old to catch latest changes. But yes, I'm a lot curious about 10.03.1. Seems that are a lot of new code and a lot of new goodies!! Very excited about.

AntiGenX wrote:

So, out of curiosity, are most people building backfire or from trunk/bleeding edge? My latest working build is listed as "KAMIKAZE (bleeding edge, r21771)" from svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk

I try to stick with the stable branch, but I upgrade to trunk if I need a new feature or if I want to check if it fixes a bug.

luminoso wrote:

Last commit to backfire trunk have a lot of new code (https://dev.openwrt.org/changeset/21803/branches/backfire/package ??) for WNDR3700 chipset. But last compiled trunk is to old to catch latest changes. But yes, I'm a lot curious about 10.03.1. Seems that are a lot of new code and a lot of new goodies!! Very excited about.

Your comment confuses me. Backfire is a branch of trunk. It looks to me like most changes are happening on trunk with select fixes being backported to the backfire branch.

(Last edited by AntiGenX on 16 Jun 2010, 22:45)

AntiGenX wrote:

Your comment confuses me. Backfire is a branch of trunk. It looks to me like most changes are happening on trunk with select fixes being backported to the backfire branch.

Sorry. I'm new to this. I just browsed to backfire and saw that changes. I still confuse what a trunk/branch is and how they work.
My point is that are newer changes that the compiled trunk version (i'm spelling this right?)

luminoso wrote:

Sorry. I'm new to this. I just browsed to backfire and saw that changes. I still confuse what a trunk/branch is and how they work.
My point is that are newer changes that the compiled trunk version (i'm spelling this right?)

No need to be sorry, I was trying to get clarification on your comment. Different projects treat the code repository in different ways. It looks like openwrt treats the trunk as the most up to date code (bleeding edge), then for numbered releases they create a branch, stabilize that branch and then release. Once the branch is released it is frozen except to backport fixes from trunk.

I may not be 100% correct on their code practices, but that's what I have observed since I started poking around a few weeks.

If you're curious about sourcecode management, check out this link at Stack Overflow.. Both of the top two answers are correct, it just depending on how the developers decide to manage the code.

Did anyone have  success to restore the caldata partition?
DD-Wrt forum has some users that need to restore caldata partition, but this procedure don't unlock  the partition .

An user that tried it continue to receive the message :

Could not open mtd device: art
Can't open device for writing!

Thanks for any help.

aport wrote:
VCh wrote:

Hi,

Thanks a lot, aport, for your help, this is probably the solution for my problem.

But I've the following error when writing the file :

root@OpenWrt:/tmp# mtd -r write caldata art
Could not open wtd device : art
Can't open device for writing!

No more success using "unlock art" or mtd4 instead of art

Here are the /proc/mtd list for information :

mtd0: xx "u-boot"
mtd1: xx "u-boot-env"
mtd2: xx "kernel"
mtd3: xx "rootfst"
mtd4: xx "art"
mtd5: xx "firmware"

I read something about building another firmware/kernel with specific option to allow writing... : Impossible due to my Linux level...
Is there no other way to write this damned file ?

Ps.
I've changed the MAC at 120C but, there is another MAC for wireless...
Maybe a third if WAN/LAN are not on the same...

The partition is masked which disables writing.
In trunk/target/linux/ar71xx/files/arch/mips/ar71xx/mach-wndr3700.c:

static struct mtd_partition wndr3700_partitions[] = {
    {
        .name        = "uboot",
        .offset        = 0,
        .size        = 0x050000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "env",
        .offset        = 0x050000,
        .size        = 0x020000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "rootfs",
        .offset        = 0x070000,
        .size        = 0x720000,
    } , {
        .name        = "config",
        .offset        = 0x790000,
        .size        = 0x010000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "config_bak",
        .offset        = 0x7a0000,
        .size        = 0x010000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "pot",
        .offset        = 0x7b0000,
        .size        = 0x010000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "traffic_meter",
        .offset        = 0x7c0000,
        .size        = 0x010000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "language",
        .offset        = 0x7d0000,
        .size        = 0x020000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    } , {
        .name        = "caldata",
        .offset        = 0x7f0000,
        .size        = 0x010000,
        .mask_flags    = MTD_WRITEABLE,
    }
};

Removing the line

.mask_flags = MTD_WRITEABLE,

should let you write to the partition.


Odd though, this mapping doesn't match the partitions on my wndr3700... A bit confused by this one.

Hi,

I have a small issue with my WNDR3700. After some misconfiguration of firewall I'm unable to access the router, I get get some ping response just after it boots, but after that it just goes in silent mode (lamps still blink, but no response to ping's or network traffic). I got hold of an NOKIA DKU-5 cable and made it into a console cable, using the pinout in the wiki.

Only a strange issue rose when i tried to use it. Hyper term only shown one line and nothing else, realterm shows a lot more text but most of it is gibberish (I'm able to see wndr3, Init, registe string in the output) and from time to time shows an error message that uart received a framing error.

Could it be an issue with the connector on the cable (used IDC-14) or just an issue with win7?

Thanks.

edvarim wrote:

Hi,
I have a small issue with my WNDR3700. After some misconfiguration of firewall I'm unable to access the router, I get get some ping response just after it boots, but after that it just goes in silent mode (lamps still blink, but no response to ping's or network traffic). I got hold of an NOKIA DKU-5 cable and made it into a console cable, using the pinout in the wiki.

Only a strange issue rose when i tried to use it. Hyper term only shown one line and nothing else, realterm shows a lot more text but most of it is gibberish (I'm able to see wndr3, Init, registe string in the output) and from time to time shows an error message that uart received a framing error.

Could it be an issue with the connector on the cable (used IDC-14) or just an issue with win7?

How is your terminal configured? You need 115200 bps, parity 8N1, and you need both hardware AND software flow control set to off.

If all of that stuff is right, the framing message implies to me that maybe your cable might be a bit flaky or else the serial controller is having trouble keeping up with the bitrate (but I strongly suspect the former). Did you test end-to-end continuity with a multimeter for each pin? The IDC14 connector shouldn't make a difference so long as things are wired to the right pins.

As an alternative to setting up a serial cable, have you tried just reflashing it using the procedure in the wiki? You can go through the "I bricked my router" piece so long as Uboot is intact, even if your OpenWRT install is hosed.

essdz wrote:

How is your terminal configured? You need 115200 bps, parity 8N1, and you need both hardware AND software flow control set to off.

Yes those were my settings.

essdz wrote:

If all of that stuff is right, the framing message implies to me that maybe your cable might be a bit flaky or else the serial controller is having trouble keeping up with the bitrate (but I strongly suspect the former). Did you test end-to-end continuity with a multimeter for each pin? The IDC14 connector shouldn't make a difference so long as things are wired to the right pins.

Tonight/tomorrow i will be disassembling the usb plug side of the cable to see if there might be an issue there.


essdz wrote:

As an alternative to setting up a serial cable, have you tried just reflashing it using the procedure in the wiki? You can go through the "I bricked my router" piece so long as Uboot is intact, even if your OpenWRT install is hosed.

From my understanding the install is not hosed, its just the firewall i managed to fuck up. I managed to connect to it with putty, before connection died (my guess thats the firewall). The reason why i tried the serial cable approach was that i did not want to reconfigure everything (including openvpn) from scratch.

edvarim wrote:
essdz wrote:

If all of that stuff is right, the framing message implies to me that maybe your cable might be a bit flaky or else the serial controller is having trouble keeping up with the bitrate (but I strongly suspect the former). Did you test end-to-end continuity with a multimeter for each pin? The IDC14 connector shouldn't make a difference so long as things are wired to the right pins.

Tonight/tomorrow i will be disassembling the usb plug side of the cable to see if there might be an issue there.

The USB plug itself is presumably OK. By "end to end", I mostly meant the end-to-end continuity of the wires as they leave the serial side of the Nokia converter to the header on the board. I recall seeing a problem very similar to yours when my GND connection had come loose mid-wire.

You can also have a problem if the TXD wire is loosely connected. If the loose wire accidentally "transmits" anything early on during the WNDR3700 boot sequence, U-boot will abort the usual boot and drop you into a prompt.

edvarim wrote:

From my understanding the install is not hosed, its just the firewall i managed to fuck up. I managed to connect to it with putty, before connection died (my guess thats the firewall). The reason why i tried the serial cable approach was that i did not want to reconfigure everything (including openvpn) from scratch.

Not that this helps you right now, but the OpenWRT package "ead" provides an emergency access daemon which sometimes allows you to recover control. (I didn't read through the fine print to see how well it works in the case that the firewall is hosed, but I imagine that it might.) Of course, you need to have it previously installed before things go south!

edvarim have you tried failsafe mode? That is tapping one of the buttons like crazy next to number 4 at the front for about 20 seconds. If failsafe mode works, you can telnet it without a password.

Does anyone have a working .config for compiling Backfire for the WNDR3700?

tysonedwards wrote:

Does anyone have a working .config for compiling Backfire for the WNDR3700?

The default works fine, just select WNDR3700 in device type and set CONFIG_ATH_USER_REGD=y if you want 5 GHz support.

(Last edited by zorxd on 28 Jun 2010, 00:25)

defconfig includes all apps for some oddball reason, and it was too large to actually install... I have been going in and trying to strip out x11, sound support, asterisk and many of the other things by hand, but it's slow going.

Or are you saying that there is another default config than the one provided by make defconfig that is a little less bloated?

If you just select the WNDR3700 target in the menu, it won't include all those packages. It will build you a stock firmware and build all the packages separately so you can add them after installation.

I got the same error Bad Magic Number no matter what I tried. Why? Who can help me?

Please Help I need to know how to Flash my WNDR3700 back to Factory setting. As of right now a 30/30/30 reset does not work and the router's led power light is blinking green. Originally i flashed it with the dd-wrt and it worked fine, but when I flashed it to the second .bin file it stoped working. What do I do?

JESSE:
To restore your WNDR3700 back to factory, please follow the following guide on the Wiki.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/wndr3700?s[]=wndr3700#uh.oh.i.bricked.my.router.optional

Tonight I updated to r22275 and my wired connections no longer work.  I can't seem to get a connection although a carrier is detected.  DHCP fails to get an address, and manually setting it via ifconfig doesn't help.  Oddly enough my WiFi connections work fine, as does WAN access.   I updated via Luci and kept my previous settings.

Anyone have an idea what's going on?

EDIT: I resolved my issue by flashing the original firmware back on (based on instructions in the wiki).  I then re-flashed r22275 and it worked fine with all ports until I tried re-applying my previous settings via Luci -- this caused the wired connections to fail again.  So I then went back to the original firmware, applied r22275 again and manually edited the important files instead of restoring my settings via Luci, and everything works as expected.  I'm not sure about the actual cause of my issue, but 22275 does work fine.

(Last edited by SDNick484 on 26 Jul 2010, 21:58)

okay, then I might want to upgrade as well smile

SDNick484 wrote:

Tonight I updated to r22275 and my wired connections no longer work.  I can't seem to get a connection although a carrier is detected.  DHCP fails to get an address, and manually setting it via ifconfig doesn't help.  Oddly enough my WiFi connections work fine, as does WAN access.   I updated via Luci and kept my previous settings.

Anyone have an idea what's going on?

EDIT: I resolved my issue by flashing the original firmware back on (based on instructions in the wiki).  I then re-flashed r22275 and it worked fine with all ports until I tried re-applying my previous settings via Luci -- this caused the wired connections to fail again.  So I then went back to the original firmware, applied r22275 again and manually edited the important files instead of restoring my settings via Luci, and everything works as expected.  I'm not sure about the actual cause of my issue, but 22275 does work fine.

Make sure that in /etc/config/network you are using vlan1 and NOT vlan0.

I'm having a problem where my LAN to WAN performance is terrible.  On my WRT54gl (Kamikaze) I'm getting 10-12 megabits down and 1 up.  Using the most recent build of the backfire branch (on my WNDR3700) I'm getting 1 up and .1 down (yes, .1).  Obviously this is totally unusable.

I already have a bit of a thread going here:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=114081

But I wanted to post here too in case anyone else has had a similar problem (or can reproduce) with the latest revisions.  By the way, anyone building anything recent might want to consider adding the patch mentioned in that thread.  It seems some recent updates disabled the switching functionality of the router (leaving it to behave more like a hub).

So, any ideas?

(Last edited by Comitizer on 30 Jul 2010, 14:38)

aport wrote:

Make sure that in /etc/config/network you are using vlan1 and NOT vlan0.

Has this changed to vlan0 from vlan1? I'd better fix my /etc/config/network in files directory if that's the case..

(Last edited by jake1981 on 31 Jul 2010, 07:25)